The purpose of this study was to expand the knowledge of adult motivation in unconventional professional settings. Nine focus group interviews were conducted with child care providers in child care settings from four states in the Western United States: California, Idaho, Oregon, and Washington. At each focus group interview three to eight…

Many teachers have designed lessons for students who will be working in groups to discuss and solve a problem. After investing time in constructing an interesting problem, creating strategically designed groups, and introducing the problem carefully, teachers may be left wondering how to help students collaborate to make sense of mathematical…

The place of education for and about human rights within the school curriculum remains contested and this paper reports on the first national cross-sectoral investigation of its place in Australian curricula and more specifically in national and state History curriculum documents. Opportunities for the inclusion of human rights based studies were…

Universities in Europe face a variety of reform initiatives, and university reform can be seen as a wicked problem that should be resolved through collaborative efforts. In Finland, there has been considerable resistance to proposed reforms, with university personnel complaining that they have not been heard. Students, on the other hand, seem…

What an instructor does on the first day of a course can impact students' motivation in the course. To build upon these prior research findings, we implemented a first-day intervention to influence students' motivation by increasing their perceptions of course interest, course usefulness, and instructor caring. The participants were undergraduate…

Background: Cooperative learning activities provide active participation of students leading to better learning. The literature suggests that cooperative learning activities need to be structured for a more effective and productive interaction. Purpose: This study aimed to test the differences among three instructional conditions in terms of…

This handbook presents the fundamentals of successful study circle leadership. It also includes pointers for study circle organizers and participants, concluding with a comparison of dialogue and debate--a guide for distinguishing study circles from other types of discussion. The guide contains seven sections that cover the following topics: (1)…

This guide was developed to help train leaders of small-group, democratic, highly participatory discussions known as "study circles." The guide is organized in two parts. The first part presents the basics of study circle leadership, and is written for participants in the training. It includes information on what a study circle is, tips…

This paper focuses on the selection, training, and monitoring of the small group leaders in an extensive program of sex education. It discusses leadership screening, early orientation, small group training sessions, practice leadership, supervision, evaluation, and problem solution in this highly sensitive area of sexuality. (Author)

Focuses on various levels of diabetic patients' involvement in the care of their disease and effects of these levels on how closely they later followed self-care programs. Suggests that by participating in group discussions about excuses for not following a self-care regimen, and offering solutions to counter those excuses, diabetic patients…

This article considers the experience of a long and significant relationship with a number of students at M.I.T. This student group developed an extraclinical association, and their reactions to this association are evaluated. (Author/RK)

A "Think Tank Discussion Program" was an effective means for promoting interaction among seven non-handicapped students and a profoundly hearing impaired student as well as providing a small group alternative to whole class discussion. The hearing impaired student's contributions were stimulated by comments from other students and the program…

Current approaches to workplace learning emphasize designing communities of practice that are intended to support both formal and informal knowledge acquisition. This article presents the design and research of a knowledge-based community of practice for Subaru, based on principles outlined by Scardamalia (2002) and Zhang, Scardamalia, Lamon,…

For some time now, English teachers have used electronic discussion in their classrooms. There is also a considerable literature suggesting benefits to student learning in doing so. However this research often downplays the context in which the discussion group is used--so that the particularities in use, including teacher decision-making as they…

In this qualitative study, the authors merge two bodies of previously separated scholarship: (1) a socio-cultural understanding of adolescent girls in light of the shifting meaning of ideal girlhood, and (2) the participation and success of adolescent girls in school-based literacy activities. They apply these fields of inquiry to explore the…